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Tonight’s 4 Factors (@ BOS, 11/29/07)

After each game this season, we’ll be taking a look at what the four factors have to say about the game– how the winner won and the loser lost. For an intro to the four factors, see A Layman’s Guide to Advanced NBA Statistics.

So the Knicks follow up the season’s best win with one of the worst losses in franchise history. Par for the course with this squad. Speaking honestly, a blowout heading into the game was probable– we’re talking about a matchup between a monster on both ends (Celtics 7th in offensive efficiency and 1st in defensive efficiency) and a team with substantial weaknesses on both ends (Knicks 25th in offense and 26th in defense).

The Knicks’ only hope to be competitive is through their inconsistent offense, and so a road game against the NBA’s top defense makes for a pretty hopeless situation. But the sheer magnitude of it was just too much. Coming out of this game, there will likely be a lot of renewed talk about how poorly the roster is constructed. But increasingly it seems like the more pressing problem is that the team is simply not coached very well. The better defenses in the NBA will take away your first option, necessitating adjustments and countermoves. But whenever a defense strikes upon a good strategy to thwart the Knicks’ attack, it seems as if Isiah has no other tricks in his pocket and the game is essentially already lost.

4 factor stats were acquired using the ESPN4Factors script by Cherokee of the ABPRmetrics board. Firefox users can use this script (after installing the Greasemonkey extension) to see 4 factor stats automatically displayed in all NBA boxscores on espn.com.

28 comments on “Tonight’s 4 Factors (@ BOS, 11/29/07)”

I’ve said it before: this is no ordinary bad team. This is an epically bad team. They may not end up with the worst record in the NBA, but it will still be the worst team. You have to give extra bonus “badness” points for the horrific PR the team has endured over the offseason.

This is a horrifically awful squad assembled by stupid, greedy, embarrassing people. I’m a die-hard, life-long fan, but I’m rooting for them to lose. I know that a loss like tonight’s is only good for the team in the long run.

Extra bonus “suck” points for having far and away the highest salary in the NBA.

You’re right, as bad as the players played, they never have answers for defensive schemes, and that’s on the coach. Every team gets away with doubling Curry in the post, and the Knicks have no answers for that.

I’m assigning about 30 points of this loss to the epically stupid quotes from Q in today’s paper:

“It?s not that big a deal to us,? Richardson said of facing the 11-2 Celtics. ?It?s like the media makes more of The Big Three and all of them. We?re not in awe of them. They ain?t won no championships. They have a good record right now, but that don?t matter. Dallas showed that [last season].?

?They?re not that deep of a team,? Richardson said. ?After those three, there?s a significant dropoff.?

im a die hard knick fan from the losing days of ken bannister and rory sparrow, but at least they came out and played hard. these knicks suck, no effort was put out from the jump ball, Eddie “muffins” curry didnt even attempt to jump at all!!! Pathetic i tell you just pathetic..Bottom line is ..Isiah CANNOT COACH!! These knicks need a young coach who understands that curry will NEVER play harder , he does nothing!, no rebounds , no blocks, he cant even pass out of the post!Sit his A** down and watch this young team compete like they should…..

Isiah Thomas shouldn’t be fired. He should be handed a ceremonial Japanese dagger and told to do the honorable thing. Firing or resignation just won’t atone for the disgrace he has brought upon the Knicks.

I am a great coach. Since signing my extension, I am something like 8-28. That is exceptionally well, as most of my fellow New Yorkers would agree. We keep the payroll right around the league’s highest so that people expect us to be good – look at the Yankees. And best of all, I always keep a stupid ass grin on my face to feign disbelief. You know, maybe I should make a comeback… Knicks coach, GM, and starting point guard. Yeah, I like the sound of that!

Jon – right on with the Q comment. going into the game this team hadn’t won a road game and a record of 4-9, that comment was disrespectful to the C’s (11-2) especially right after a tough loss to cleveland. additionaly we lost 30 pts of production out of marbury and crawford.

At this point I am rooting for Ls every game — as I think it’s the only way to bring this fiasco to an end. I actually found last night’s game pretty funny as a L like that counted for about 5 Ls in terms of bringing the Isiah era to an end. Keep ’em coming Zeke — even Dolan won’t protect you much longer.

BTW, I hope everyone caught the piece in The Onion this week about Isiah. If you didn’t, go read it — it’s perfect. :-D

Is it just me or does anybody else also think that besides dumping Isiah we should really get rid of Curry, Marbury, Crawford, Rose, James, Q Rich?? I mean it’s time to come to peace with the fact that this team was terribly built. We’ve got to start over from scratch, bringing young talents through draft or free agency (a little down the road), while maintaining the few bright spots on the roster (Lee, Balkman, Robinson…)

– Andrew Bogut outrebounds Eddie “Muffins” Curry by a margin of 15 to 1 (great name cbrooklyn, I suggest it sticks…)

– Zach Randolph has the Knicks’ first triple-double of the season (points {all scored on
offensive put-backs}, rebounds {all grabbed from his own blown lay-ups}, and turnovers {all because he repeatedly catches the ball 14 ft from the basket, imagines himself 50lbs lighter, tries to take his man off the dribble, ignores the coming double-team, falls down, and – in so doing – hands the ball to the Bucks)

– Malik Rose will collect his per-game pay check of $91,773 (yearly salary: $7,525,397) while not leaving the bench, even though the Knicks are blown out by twenty-five.

– Stephon Marbury sacrifices a goat on the court at halftime and tries to lead the crowd in a santeria chant. The crowd responds with “You Suck!” After the game, Stephon is baffled why nobody loves him (his stat line: 9 points on 2 for 20 shooting, 1 assist, 0 rebounds, 6 turnovers, 10 beers and 2 interns on the bench during the 4th quarter).

He clearly put together a team, at least his starters, that are offensive minded and poor on defense. Then he tries to make his poor defensive players into defensive minded players. That makes as much sense as running your offense through Balkman and Jeffries.

I say, scrap the defense. Dont even bother with it, dont think about it at all. at least with the starters. Just let the offensive minded player take as many shots as they can as fast as they can. In other words, pretend you are an old ABA team. Just try to out score the other team.

Let the defensive teams play defense. Matter of fact create a defensive team of your defensive players. Let Balkman, Jeffires, Jones, and Collins play the all defense second unit.

Things cant get worse than they are now. I say do your best to outscore the other team. The 4 wins this season came on strong offensive games. I say ride that pony for all it worth (32 wins). That is at least 10 games better than the “defensive” team could win. Maybe you’ll get lucky and steal 8 or 9 games and sneak into the playoffs. But for the love of all things great and small, the defense is not working!! Give it up.

The old proverb goes: “One cannot make chicken soup from chicken poop. Well, you could try but I would not eat it”.

Isiah has chicken poop, yet he tries to make chicken soup. The result…disgusting!! But chicken poop isnt a bad thing if you find a good use for it. Chicken poop is a great fertilizer and can even be burned to produce energy.

I say take this chicken poop and, as Ray Charles would say: “let it do what it do baby”.

There’s a story in the Post this morning quoting Magic Johnson talking about Marbury having to be a leader.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Maybe he can take the team out to dinner. Use his great line “Get in the truck”.
Marbury to Leader = Isiah to Integrity.
BOOOOOOOOOO.

Zach Randolph is shooting .423 and has blocked one shot all season. That is not a typo: the man has played eleven games, 32.5 minutes per game at the power forward position and has blocked one shot. Throw in Eddy Curry’s 8 blocks and you have a grand total of 9 blocks from the starting power forward and center, who have combined to start 25 games. How are you supposed to win like that? Kevin Garnett has 23 blocks all by himself, in 14 games.

Zach Randolph has now become my most dreaded Knick, and that’s saying a lot.

BUT… when the contracts are about to expire, they start to take on value. I mean – if you were a serious contender, needing a scorer off the bench, and only had to pay him for half the season… you might actually want Marbury, or Curry, or Crawford.

MR, it’s not like you’re way off base. And my proposed Bulls trade IS kind of a sucker deal (for them).

But it’s more complicated than:
“The Bulls had no use for Curry and the Blazers had no use for Randolph. Each would have given them to the Knicks for nothing. It?s pretty simple to see why.”

If Zach made $5 million per, not $13m, he’d have value – not as a franchise player, but a guy who can score and is one of the best rebounders in the league. Easily a rotation player on a good team. Contenders are willing to overpay, to get that little something extra.

ok, ok, with four years left that’s REALLY overpaying.

As for Curry… the Bulls didn’t think he was worthless, they just thought he was about to have a heart attack – and he’d told them he wouldn’t re-sign, so they were going to lose him for nothing. Those two things zeroed out his value.

But now, as a role player at $5 or $6m, he’s fine. As it stands, his contract is a lot better than Zach’s (and a year shorter), plus he’s only 24, so I’d guess he does have trade value – which will only increase as the contract winds down.

And “Starbury” has value because he’ll save someone money. Next February we can trade his expiring deal for two bozos with contracts running through 2010, plus a draft pick. Expensive way to buy a pick, but what do we fans care?

Curry and Randolph cannot play together; that has been proven conclusively to me. You’re always going to have terrible frontcourt defense if those two guys are your starting PF and C. If Curry has to go because Randolph is untradeable, that’s fine, but they simply cannot co-exist.

The Randolph trade is possibly Isiah’s worst move and will be haunting us for years.